Tuesdays with Merton Podcast

Thomas Merton's journey to Alaska, a sojourn of seventeen days, has been rendered mostly as a "blip" within his remarkable biography. Yet the mysterious frontier suddenly surfaced to captivate him. Though short in duration, Merton's experience of the vast terrain, along with the talks he gave, were profound in spiritual insights. This presentation will explore that untold story, along with visual...

  Scott Russell Sanders is the author of twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, including Hunting for Hope and A Conservationist Manifesto . His most recent books are Earth Works: Selected Essays (2012) and Divine Animal: A Novel (2014). A collection of his eco-science fiction stories entitled Dancing in Dreamtime will be published this fall, and a new edition of his documentary narrative, Stone...

This is a Tuesdays with Merton bonus episode from the archives of the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. In June of 2021, Andrew Prevot, associate professor of Theology at Boston College, presented a plenary address to the 17th General Meeting of the International Thomas Merton Society. His address was titled "Contemplation in Times of Crisis."   Andrew L. Prevot, associate professor o...

On June 27, 1949, Merton was allowed, for the first time, to venture outside the Abbey of Gethsemani’s gated enclosure to walk in the woods alone. His writing and his spirituality changed forever as a result. In Thomas Merton's Gethsemani: Landscapes of Paradise , author Monica Weis notes, "Once beyond the monastery walls, Merton's heart soared." Why? Perhaps, after being doused in words for years...

In a 1966 Commonweal article, Merton describes a time when “almost nothing is really predictable … almost everything public is patently phony, and in which there is at the same time an immense ground of personal authenticity that is right there and so obvious that … most cannot even believe that it is there." Is there a more apt description of the situation we face today? How then can we fashion a...

This is a Tuesdays with Merton Bonus Episode from the Archives of the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. The following lecture was the ITMS Presidential Address of David Golemboski delivered for the 17th General Meeting of the International Thomas Merton Society, presented June 26, 2021. David Golemboski is an Assistant Professor of Government & International Relations at Augustana Uni...

As participating readers of his powerful gift for spiritual direction, even in absentia and posthumously present, already know from their experience of his writings, the most significant forces in Thomas Merton’s own spiritual formation came from his reading and pursuing of intersections and convergences with those whose influence shaped his ever-organic selfhood and its transcendence. In many way...

Clement of Alexandria, in his Protreptikos (Greek for “persuasion”), defined the Church as “an army that sheds no blood.” This phrase struck Thomas Merton with special force. It greatly distressed him that so many of his Christian contemporaries were advocates of war and even saw nuclear weapons as enjoying God’s blessing. This session will discuss Merton’s engagement in peacemaking and his close...

  Merton Was in Love With Wales — its poetry, its Celtic sensibility, its ravishing beauty and rich history. Although he came to the art of David Jones rather late in his life, he understood implicitly what Jones was doing as a visionary. There are some striking things that they were doing in parallel unaware of each other, probing the past, resurrecting forgotten cultural memories, attending to t...

Every wisdom tradition describes in its own way a cloud of unknowing that veils the utterly ineffable source and force coursing through this universe as its very life. With paradoxical lucidity on matters of darkness and unknowing, Thomas Merton shared his experience of being "overshadowed" by the Cloud of enveloping Mystery. His desire to live into its Presence has become a well-scripted legacy o...

This is a Tuesdays with Merton bonus episode from the archives of the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. It was recorded at the 16th General Meeting of the International Thomas Merton Society at Santa Clara University in California, June 28, 2019. Robert Ellsberg is the Publisher of Orbis Books and the author, most recently, of Blessed Among All Women: Women Saints, Prophets, and Witne...

Catholic Engagement with the Black Lives Matter movement has been hesitant, at best. At worst, Catholic leaders deride it with virulent opposition and denigration. As the Movement for Black Lives claims Malcolm X as one of their inspira­tions, this presentation will examine Merton's engagement with Malcolm X and radical Black thought to suggest how Catholics should engage the contemporary movement...

Anne Pearson is a Junior at Bellarmine University majoring in clinical psychology and political science and minoring in criminal justice studies. In her free time, she enjoys reading, cooking and engaging in bipartisan discussion with industry executives through the National Millennial Community. She presented “Thomas Merton, Black Lives Matter, and White Passivity” for Bellarmine University’s thi...

During these turbulent, uncertain times of pandemics – corona virus, racism, unbridled individualism – and, thankfully, of moral reckoning, Thomas Merton offers a welcome and much needed message of hope.  He reminds us that we are “created for JOY.”  In this presentation, we will consider how Merton experienced and envisioned joy, particularly the joy of being human and the joy of friendship.  For...

This is a Tuesdays with Merton Bonus episode from the archives of the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. Dr. M. Shawn Copeland, is professor emerita of systematic theology at Boston College. It was the seventh annual Thomas Merton Center Black History Month Lecture, taped live February 26, 2013 at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky.  

In our time together I will share aspects of Merton’s life and teachings that had a profound and lasting effect in my own life and in my attempts to pass on to others what Thomas Merton has passed on to me. These foundational aspects of Merton’s life and teachings include our own unfolding life with all its blessings and broken edges embodying the presence of God that protects us from nothing even...

Exercises in Merton's journals can mentor our lives, producing epiphanies of the graced interdependence of all things. Jonathan Montaldo served as director of the Merton Center and as ITMS president. He co-edited The Intimate Merton. Renditions of Merton’s writing include A Year with Thomas Merton, Dialogues with Silence, and Choosing to Love the World. A co-general editor for Fons Vitae’s Merton...

Through image, word, and poetry, this presentation explores Merton's encounter with the biblical Wisdom tradition, the remembrance of God in a feminine key. How should the remembrance of God as Wisdom-Sophia shape the crises of our times? Christopher Pramuk is the author of Sophia: The Hidden Christ of Thomas Merton, and At Play in Creation: Merton's Awakening to the Feminine Divine. He holds the...

William Shannon described Merton’s correspondence with Etta Gullick as “the most charming set of all,” yet, she is little known in the U.S. After briefly introducing Gullick, we will consider her exchange with Merton on contemplative prayer. Bonnie Thurston resigned a Chair and Professorship in New Testament to live quietly in her home state of West Virginia. She has written a dissertation, over 5...

Merton's writings share important challenges to racism with the BLM movement to contemporary women and men of good will, especially those who are white. Daniel Horan, OFM is the Scotus Chair of Spirituality at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago and the author of 12 books including The Franciscan Heart of Thomas Merton and the forthcoming Striving Toward Authenticity: Engaging Thomas Merton on R...